A bad man

When Gov. Spitzer’s shocking misuse of state police to gather information on Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno first surfaced many months ago in the New York Post, which has carried the story relentlessly ever since, the accounts of Spitzer’s unrestrained behavior convinced me that this was a man with a disordered personality, a man so inflamed with his own aggression and sense of self-righteousness that he was unsuited for any high public position. The Bruno affair reminded me of my long-time subjective impression of Spitzer (which came as much from his photographs as from the accounts of his conduct as bullying prosecutor) as a man of animalistic aggression. This came through especially clearly in his eyes, which did not look like the eyes of a man but the eyes of a wolf.

From that angle, his astonishing, wildly reckless behavior in repeatedly securing the services of high-price call girls and illegally concealing the repeated transfer of multi-thousand dollar payments from his bank to the bank of the prostitution ring (and it was those improper payments that brought him to the attention of FBI investigators) is not astonishing, but fits the pattern of a man who places no limits on himself.

I don’t offen agree with the Wall Street Journal, but its March 11 editorial on Spitzer, summing up his career as Attorney General, or, rather, as Thug General, of New York State, fits my own relatively uninformed view of him.

Spitzer’s Rise and Fall

One might call it Shakespearian if there were a shred of nobility in the story of Eliot Spitzer’s fall. There is none. Governor Spitzer, who made his career by specializing in not just the prosecution, but the ruin, of other men, is himself almost certainly ruined.

Mr. Spitzer’s brief statement yesterday about a “private matter” surely involves what are widely reported to be his activities with an expensive prostitution ring discovered by the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. Those who believe Eliot Spitzer is getting his just deserts may be entitled to that view, but it misses the greater lesson for our politics.

Mr. Spitzer coasted into the Governorship on the wings of a reputation as a “tough” public prosecutor. Mr. Spitzer, though, was no emperor. He had not merely arrogated to himself the powers he held and used with such aggression. He was elected.

In our system, citizens agree to invest one of their own with the power of public prosecution. We call this a public trust. The ability to bring the full weight of state power against private individuals or entities has been recognized since the Magna Carta as a power with limits. At nearly every turn, Eliot Spitzer has refused to admit that he was subject to those limits.

The stupendously deluded belief that the sitting Governor of New York could purchase the services of prostitutes was merely the last act of a man unable to admit either the existence of, or need for, limits. At the least, he put himself at risk of blackmail, and in turn the possible distortion of his public duties. Mr. Spitzer’s recklessness with the state’s highest elected office, though, is of a piece with his consistent excesses as Attorney General from 1999 to 2006.

He routinely used the extraordinary threat of indicting entire firms, a financial death sentence, to force the dismissal of executives, such as AIG’s Maurice “Hank” Greenberg. He routinely leaked to the press emails obtained with subpoena power to build public animosity against companies and executives. In the case of Mr. Greenberg, he went on national television to accuse the AIG founder of “illegal” behavior. Within the confines of the law itself, though, he never indicted Mr. Greenberg. Nor did he apologize.

Read a selection of Journal editorials and op-eds about New York’s Governor, including coverage of Mr. Spitzer’s tenure as the state’s chief law enforcement officer

In perhaps the incident most suggestive of Mr. Spitzer’s lack of self-restraint, the then-Attorney General personally threatened John Whitehead after the former Goldman Sachs chief published an article on this page defending Mr. Greenberg. “I will be coming after you,” Mr. Spitzer said, according to Mr. Whitehead’s account. “You will pay the price. This is only the beginning, and you will pay dearly for what you have done.”

Jack Welch, the former head of GE, said he was told to tell Ken Langone—embroiled in Mr. Spitzer’s investigation of former NYSE chairman Dick Grasso—that the AG would “put a spike through Langone’s heart.” New York Congresswoman Sue Kelly, who clashed with Mr. Spitzer in 2003, had her office put out a statement that “the attorney general acted like a thug.”

These are not merely acts of routine political rough-and-tumble. They were threats—some rhetorical, some acted upon—by one man with virtually unchecked legal powers.

Eliot Spitzer’s self-destructive inability to recognize any limit on his compulsions was never more evident than his staff’s enlistment of the New York State Police in a campaign to discredit the state’s Senate Majority Leader, Joseph Bruno. On any level, it was nuts. Somehow, Team Spitzer thought they could get by with it. In the wake of that abusive fiasco, his public approval rating plunged.

Mr. Spitzer’s dramatic fall yesterday began in the early afternoon with a posting on the Web site of the New York Times about the alleged link to prostitutes. The details in the criminal complaint about “Client-9,” who is reported to be Mr. Spitzer, will now be played for titters by the press corps. But one may ask: Where were the media before this? With a few exceptions, the media were happy to prosper from his leaks and even applaud, rather than temper, the manifestly abusive instincts of a public official.

There really is nothing very satisfying about the rough justice being meted out to Eliot Spitzer. He came to embody a system that revels in the entertainment value of roguish figures who rise to power by destroying the careers of others, many of them innocent. Better still, when the targets are as presumably unsympathetic as Wall Street bankers and brokers.

Acts of crime deserve prosecution by the state. The people, in turn, deserve prosecutors and officials who understand the difference between the needs of the public good and the needs of unrestrained personalities who are given the honor of high office.

- end of initial entry -

LA writes:

I find this at Wikipedia:

Spitzer was born to Austrian Jewish parents, and raised in the affluent Riverdale section of The Bronx in New York City. His family was not particularly religious and Spitzer did not have a bar mitzvah.

His family was so irreligious that he didn’t even have a bar mitzvah. Meaning he has nothing of the Jewish religion in his background, probably not even the holidays and holiday candles that invest ordinary life, especially the life of the family, with holiness.

So he’s a totally secular Jew. Grounded in nothing but liberalism and his instinctive aggressiveness (directed against Wall Street malefactors, against Republicans), which the liberalism justifies and gives an unlimited moral sanction.

Christopher C. writes:

As a fellow New Yorker, you might appreciate this anecdote about Spitzer’s irreligiousness.

Last September, on a bright sunny Saturday afternoon, I went for my almost usual long walk in Central Park. It was either Yom Kippur or Rosh Hoshana, excuse me for not double-checking. Now, throughout the warmer months, on Saturday afternoons, many young people, whom to my eyes appear to be semi-orthodox Jews, gather near the north end of the Great Lawn. It’s nice to see. The ladies dressed well and modestly, the young men in suit pants, good shoes, shirts and coats, if not always in ties. Roaming around the rest of the park at this time are parents with children. Basically, as you can imagine, their is a large post-synagogue presence. I’m Catholic, but one can ignore theological differences and admire serious people of faith; people with a serious, moral community.

Anyway, as you can imagine, a high holiday brings out even more of that seriousness. I suppose the analogy would be with Christmas Catholics.

It was a beautiful day.

And then, after passing through the Great Lawn area, heading to the East side, who did I see coming down the steps from the Reservoir, but Elliot Spitzer, his wife and daughters. A beautiful family scene, yes, but kind of a shame. Why? Because they had used such a day to go for a jog.

LA replies:

Good anecdote. And soon the information will be available on how recently he had used the services of the Emperor’s Club before his jogging outing with his wife and daughters.

Spencer Warren writes:

I read that Spitzer used the name George Fox for the Mayflower Hotel room. Fox is his friend and campaign contributor! He may have used this name with the prostitution ring regularly.

Also, you may be interested to know that yesterday on MSNBC, Alan Dershowitz’s first comment on Spitzer was that in Europe this would not even be a story as many politicians have mistresses, etc. He then went on to criticize the Puritanical streak in American life. He added that Spitzer had been a law student of his and he had a high opinion of him. He also made some general comments that could be taken as criticism—this was in the afternoon, shortly after the story broke. Let me note, as a former practicing attorney, that it is surprising a brilliant legal mind like Dershowitz could not see the distinction (on his leftist terms, at least) between an elected chief magistrate having one mistress and patronizing a prostitution ring.

LA replies:

According to the Times, he did use the name Fox regularly, but some of the girls understood he was the governor of New York. Aside from everything else, wasn’t he opening himself to blackmail?

And think of how weird that is to use the name of a friend for such a purpose.

I also happened to hear Dershowitz denounce America for its hypocricy. Then the reporter asked him, but didn’t Spitzer prosecute and denounce a prostitution ring himself? There was a long pause, and Dershowitz replied that that was part of the hypocrisy.

I would like to ask Dershowitz, what would a non-hypocritical America look like? I guess he means that laws against prostitution should be repealed and prostitution be regulated by the state, so that we become like the happy countries of Europe. Two years ago VFR had an item about Cologne, Germany where an ad for a brothel consisting of a seven-story-high picture of a prostitute was hung on the side of a building. That’s what Dershowitz would like the U.S. to be like. No hypocrisy.

James P. writes:

I know nothing about NY politics, and I was interested to see your reference to Spitzer trying to use the state police (and also the IRS) to destroy Bruno politically. This puts a whole different complexion on the charges against Spitzer, which some have represented as resulting from Bruno being out to nail Spitzer just like the Republicans were out to get Bill Clinton for a “victimless” sex crime. Clearly, Spitzer is hardly the wounded innocent here. What goes around comes around. Spitzer played hardball, Spitzer lost. Now he needs to resign and go away.

Mark K. writes:

Leaving aside the fact that Spitzer broke the law by transporting a hooker across state lines (evidentally he cannot be charged for having used the service), the liberal mantra is that it is a private matter than should be of no public concern (Alan Dershowitz expressed this view on CNN last night).

Here’s what I find wrong with this reasoning. If this is purely a private matter, then why would a man like Spitzer avoid the use of credit cards so as not to leave a financial trail behind? If this was purely a private matter, then he should have no problems openly using credit cards for such transactions. After all, in the liberal universe there are no moral distinctions to differentiate one financial transaction from another.

Secondly, this is a public deal because Spitzer had a wedding ceremony pledging his trust to his bride. And the wedding vow was made publically, not privately. That marriage was certified by some form of government—a public deal.

So the liberal mantra that this is a private matter doesn’t hold water.

Jim N. writes:

I’ve never been a class warfare kind of guy, and I don’t generally begrudge wealthy people their money, but I have to tell you, the most disturbing thing about the Spitzer brouhaha to me isn’t the sexual immorality and illegality of his actions; it’s the amount of dough this “servant of the people” apparently tossed around like so much confetti. I’m a fairly intelligent and capable guy, yet my yearly income wouldn’t buy one week of playtime for Elliott. And this guy calls himself a progressive?

Paul K. writes:

I remember reading a few years ago that a German a woman who was collecting unemployment benefits was urged to accept a job offer as a sex worker. After all, it’s legal, so why should a woman be collecting benefits when there’s honest work available?

I’m sure Alan Dershowitz would admire this demonstration of an absence of hypocrisy.

One of the unsavory elements of this case—as if it weren’t unsavory enough—is the revelation that the prostitute had to be warned that the New York governor “would ask you to do things that, like, you might not think were safe.” Well, we can rest assured that whatever those “things” might be, Professor Dershowitz will assure us that in any truly enlightened nation they would not raise an eyebrow.

Alan Levine writes:

Spitzer has almost outdone Jerry Springer, who is reputed to be the only man in history to pay for a whore by a check. He has made it possible for ex-President Clinton to raise his head—our former Commander in Chief, whatever his other faults, never had to pay for such things, and, I think, has more sense of the value of money.

LA replies:

Well, as we can see from the operations of the Emperors Club, paying for a prostitute by check is standard, once you get to the really pricey prostitutes.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 11, 2008 02:04 AM | Send